Tuesday, June 25, 2013

You never know who you’re going to run into when you roam the
city of St. Louis. You certainly don’t expect to meet a 6-foot dog.

But this is Duchess the Great Dane, who is arguably the
tallest dog in St. Louis. The five-year-old weighs 180 pounds and is 3-feet
tall when she’s on all fours. But when she rears up on her hind legs, Duchess
is 6-feet-4-inches tall! And that still doesn’t qualify her as the tallest dog
in America. Another Great Dane named Zeus, who hails from Michigan, holds that
record at 7-feet-tall.

Duchess is an astounding sight. She’s almost like a tourist
attraction as runners, bikers, dog walkers and even park staff slow down or
even stop to see if that’s really a dog. And Marty Connolly, Duchess’ owner,
doesn’t mind a bit.

Marty, a 63-year-old retiree from South St. Louis, is glad
to share the story of his rescue dog. Duchess is originally from California and
came to this area with her family. But demanding jobs and a new baby didn’t
leave Duchess much family time. So Marty stepped in. Marty had lost his first
beloved Great Dane, Duke, recently and Duchess fit right in.

The gentle giant ambled happily along with Marty during one
of her two daily walks in the park. When she stopped to say hello, she leaned
into the stranger that was petting her. An instant connection. And when the
stranger’s yappy dog tried to get her goat, a sniff and yawn was all the
response her sweet soul had to share.

“All I know is she loves people and other animals and her
mission from God is to help others,” Marty said.

But Duchess’ new friend wasn’t so sure.The 15-pound little dog tried to get to know Duchess by sniffing her
hind quarters. But all her little nose could reach was Duchess’ legs. They parted with a plan to meet again soon.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Sometimes it takes a new perspective to see the thing that
has been right there all the time. And even though Mama Love is 93-years-old,
it took sleeping at the foot of the bed for her to see something that had
always been there for the first time.

It was a cool spring night when Mama Love decided to change
her sleeping position on a quest to soothe the tired bones that have served her
body for the last nine decades. The next morning as the sun rose over the Metro
East property her family owns, she delighted to see out of her window a blossoming
tree in the distance. High above the green tree tops rose the tallest tree
sprouting white spring flowers.

“Ha! Now I thought, I’ve been in this house for at least 70
years and I have never seen that tree,” Mama Love marveled when she relayed the
story. “And all it took was sleeping at the foot of the bed. We might not like
it, but we all need a little change now and then you know. You never know what
you might discover.”

Mama Love knows about change. When she was born, women
couldn’t vote. When she grew up in the Southern Illinois community just outside
of St. Louis, black kids didn’t swim in the city pool or watch movies on the
main floor of the local theater. Water hoses and balconies would have to do.
And most kids in her community didn’t go to high school. But not Mama Love. She
was one of the first African-American graduates of her integrated high school.
Even though she knew a high school education wasn’t going to let her work at
the phone company or local drug store like her classmates. A high school
education was not going to save Mama Love from a lifetime of being “the help.” For
more than six decades, she spent her life going to white people’s homes to cook
their food, clean their homes and wash their clothes. Then she went home
and did the same thing for her own family.

But Mama Love has always been a believer of change. When her
kids’ white friends asked her why her kids couldn’t go swimming, she decided to
integrate the pools. When her educated and successful children grew up and
weren’t allowed to live in certain parts of town, she used her connections to
mobilize the community and sparked a fair housing movement. But the biggest
legacy of change in her life is that despite the fact that she never took one
college course, she made sure all three of her children got bachelors and
masters degrees. Education paid for one dirty dish at a time.

Change, Mama Love says, is why she’s still here when so many
of her friends are gone, when her beloved husband of 62 years has been gone for
more than a decade and when all of her own children are now eligible to collect
Social Security. Change has been what has kept her spirit fresh and her mind
active.

“But you got to have an open mind to see things,” she’ll
tell you. “Just like that tree. Been here all this time. It didn’t change. I
did.”

Then she pointed to another tree closer to her house and
closer to her heart. The tall, thick tree rose majestically as it sat at the
foot of her backyard deck. Its roots planted firmly in the family homestead.

“Now this tree, it hasn’t always been here,” she explains. “The
boys planted it when they were kids. Of course that had to be close to 60 years
ago. And look at it now, it’s still here.”

And that is one thing the mother of three, grandmother of
seven and great-grandmother of five hopes will never change.

Monday, June 3, 2013

The colorful hijabs and elaborate hookahs displayed in the
window entice Nasrulla Hazrat’s customers to come into his store, the Afghan
International Market. Located on Grand near Chippewa, the grocery and
housewares store sits in the Dutchtown neighborhood of St. Louis. But you don’t
see too many of the community’s first residents, the Deutsch, or Germans as we
know them, around anymore.

“Most of the people
who come here are refugees,” said Hazrat, an Afghani national. “People who live
around here or study English at the International Institute.”

The International Institute is steps away. Established in
1919, the nonprofit organization provides adjustment services to immigrants and
is key to the development of St. Louis’ thriving immigrant population, which
stands at 8 percent of the citizenry and includes the largest Bosnia population
outside of Bosnia.

Dutchtown itself is home to a large Asian population that
includes Chinese, Vietnamese and Indonesian. There are also people of Mexican
heritage, and immigrants from Africa and India along with African-Americans and
whites.

It’s a hodgepodge of humanity that is in your face. A tour
of the neighborhood will uncover an Iranian grocer, a Vietnamese restaurant and
an African clothing and hair braiding establishment. It’s not uncommon to see
Arabic or Chinese lettering on store signs. And a woman wearing a burqua or a
man in a Buddhist kasaya robe is just as normal to see as a kid with his underwear
peaking out of a pair of baggy jeans.

Back in the Afghani International Market, a variety of
languages fill the store as owner and customer negotiate prices. Hazrat says he
speaks both Pashto, the Afghani national language, and Dari, a Persian dialect
spoken by Afghanis. But today, he is speaking English to a Liberian customer,
who barely speaks it herself. She wants a better price for a rug. Somehow,
through gestures, eye rolls and smiles, she gets it.

Saturday, June 1, 2013

The first time I practiced yoga was enchanting. The soft
breeze from the Mississippi River tingled on my skin as I stretched my arms
high above. Looking up to the sky, the sun warmed my face as it gleamed over the
landmark St. Louis Arch. My newly-purchased yoga mat was lying on the
freshly-cut grass of the national park. And I was positioned perfectly in front
of our yogi, Maury. Surrounding him were a few dozen people who, like me, were
taking advantage of the free lessons and the perfect weather.

The morning couldn’t have started better. I didn’t even think
twice that I ran into my boss in traffic on the way downtown. It didn’t matter
to me then where she was going as she abruptly, some might say rudely, cut in
front of me on Tucker Blvd. But when I looked at my cell phone after the hour-long
yoga session and saw the missed calls and voice mails, I realized that she must
have been on her way to meet with the human resources representative at the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch.

The entire time I was guiding my body to be one with the
universe, two people were spending that continuum of space trying to inform me
that I no longer had a job.

So here I am, an unemployed journalist. I wrote more than
540 stories and took hundreds of photographs in the two years that I was
employed by the Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis. I’ve also worked at the
Belleville News-Democrat and several publications in my hometown of Detroit. I have
been blessed to be paid to write. As it stands today, writing is no longer my
profession. But it is still my art.

So in pursuit of that which feeds my soul -- my art -- I
present to you Saint Louis Stories. My first Saint Louis Story was my own. But future
Saint Louis Stories will be about the people and places that make up this richly
cultural and diverse metropolis.